Both limbs retracted.
The Solmara sections were producing their focused sound — sharp, deliberate, the acknowledgment of a strategy working as intended from the first exchange.
Dravos changed approach.
He deployed a phantom limb above the water — extending it from his shoulder at an upward angle that kept it in the air rather than on the flooded floor, the limb traveling through the space above the water's surface where the reflective layer couldn't show its ripple.
Lynara couldn't see it.
It arrived at her left arm.
The grip closed around her wrist — invisible, the phantom limb's hand holding her wrist from an angle her physical body couldn't see or block, the force real and present against her skin.
She felt it.
She pulled — the phantom grip resisting, the twenty-foot reach limb holding its position while her arm tried to retract.
She flooded upward.
